Oracle's Sun Java JDK packages are to be removed from the Ubuntu partner repositories and disabled on users systems. Oracle, in retiring the "Operating System Distributor License for Java," means Canonical no longer have permission to distribute the package. The change will affect Ubuntu 10.04 LTs, Ubuntu 10.10 and 11.04 users only. Users who have the "sun-java-6" package installed on their system will see it removed via a future software update -- the exact date of which is "TBD."

This should not affect Android development at all (I am an Android developer). Oracle is not discontinuing Java, they are merely saying that Ubuntu cannot distribute it. You can still go to the Oracle website and download by hand.

The Linux version is just a .zip file, that I downloaded and extracted. Once I set my JAVA_HOME, I was off and running again with no problems.

Thanks. I thought that because since Ubuntu is the main development environment (at least in most docs you have references to Ubuntu LTS as the dev. environment), it would likely to be a "nuisance" or "unsupported". Surely one could use any Linux, but a standard distro with LTS might come handy.